A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 eBook

of cassia, and a few lime-trees. It appeared
singular to us, that, considering the climate and the
shelter, we should see no other birds there than parrots,
parroquets, and mackaws; of the last there were prodigious
flights. Next to these birds, the animals we
found in most plenty were monkeys and guanos, and
these we frequently killed for food; for though there
were many herds of deer upon the place, yet the difficulty
of penetrating the woods prevented our coming near
them, so that though we saw them often, we killed
only two during our stay. Our prisoners assured
us that this island abounded with tygers; we did once
discover the print of a tyger’s paw upon the
beach, but the tygers themselves we never saw.
The Spaniards, too, informed us that there was often
found in the woods a most mischievous serpent, called
the Flying Snake, which they said darted itself from
the boughs of trees on either man or beast that came
within its reach, and whose sting they believed to
be inevitable death. Besides these mischievous
land-animals, the sea hereabouts is infested with
great numbers of alligators of an extraordinary size;
and we often observed a large kind of flat fish jumping
a considerable height out of the water, which we supposed
to be the fish that is said frequently to destroy
the pearl-divers, by clasping them in its fins as
they rise from the bottom; and we were told that the
divers, for their security, are now always armed with
a sharp knife, which, when they are entangled, they
stick into the belly of the fish, and thereby disengage
themselves from its embraces.

Whilst the ship continued here at anchor, the commodore,
attended by some of his officers, went in a boat to
examine a bay which lay to the northward; and afterwards
ranged all along the eastern side of the island.
In the places where they put on shore in the course
of his expedition, they generally found the soil to
be extremely rich, and met with great plenty of excellent
water. In particular, near the N.E. point of
the island, they discovered a natural cascade, which
surpassed, as they conceived, every thing of this kind,
which human art or industry hath hitherto produced.
It was a river of transparent water, about forty yards
wide, which ran down a declivity of near a hundred
and fifty yards in length. The channel it ran
in was very irregular; for it was entirely formed
of rock, both its sides and bottom being made up of
large detached blocks; and by these the course of
the water was frequently interrupted: For in some
places it ran sloping with a rapid but uniform motion,
while in other parts it tumbled over the ledges of
rocks with a perpendicular descent. All the neighbourhood
of this stream was a fine wood; and even the huge
masses of rock which overhung the water, and which,
by their various projections, formed the inequalities
of the channel, were covered with lofty forest trees.
Whilst the commodore, and those with him, were attentively
viewing this place, and remarking the different blendings